Cape family strikes gold at home
After more than a century hanging nameless on the wall, painting turns out to have a pedigree - and auction value
The painting of an orange sun melting into dusky sky over Massachusetts marshland had been hanging in a Cape Cod home, appreciated but unappraised.
The owners had no idea the piece, which had been passed down in their family since the 1860s, was worth anything, let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars. And those who study its painter, Martin Johnson Heade, had no idea it existed.
"They were very surprised," Josh Eldred, director of American paintings at Eldred's auction gallery, said of the owners, who brought their painting to the East Dennis business for appraisal in March. "But they were very calm. They took it all in stride."
The 14 1/4-by-7 1/2-inch painting, "Haying on the Marsh," is expected to bring as much as $500,000 at auction next week.
It is the gallery's policy not to identify the owners of auctioned art, and the owners of the Heade painting said they did not want to be interviewed, Eldred said.
But aside from the painting's price tag and obscurity, such discoveries are common, according to an authority on Heade.
"Heades tend to turn up more than any other major American painter," said Theodore E. Stebbins Jr., curator of American art at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum. "I get a new one every couple of months that's genuine."
Stebbins's "The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade," a critical analysis of the 19th-century American painter's work, was published in 2000, when there were 619 known Heade paintings.
Since then, about 50 have been discovered, Stebbins said. In contrast, Stebbins said he has been told that only one piece by noted artist Winslow Homer has been discovered in the past 30 years.
"No one should worry that another Heade won't turn up."
Still, Stebbins said, "people like discovery. And [Heade's] work happens to be very popular now."
Heade, who painted light, landscapes, and still lifes, worked mostly in New York and New England, Stebbins said. His work is often associated with luminism, a style of painting light and its effects instead of specific places, Stebbins said. Heade also is classified with the Hudson River School, a group of 19th-century artists who painted landscapes and were influenced by romanticism. But Heade's work isn't optimistic or realistic enough to neatly fit that categorization, Stebbins said.
Heade was "brooding," Stebbins said, so his paintings weren't popular in the 1800s. Middle-class people bought them, however, and passed them down through families, Stebbins said, adding, "They just got scattered."
While the Heades were buried in basements, or hung in corners of homes, their value escalated, Stebbins said. The paintings began to draw new interest in the 1970s, he said.
Now they often turn up at tag sales in places as far off as California.
No title was written on the painting, so Eldred chose the name "Haying on the Marsh." Stebbins made sure there weren't any other Heade paintings by that name.
"It describes the painting pretty well, so I told him to go with that title," he said.
For a painter like Heade, who was not famous in his day, this process is standard, Stebbins said. He said either he or owners had named most of Heade's works.
Eldred said that when the owners brought the Heade to the auction gallery in March, appraisers at first could not see the signature, which was hidden under a frame. But they were confident of its origins, Eldred said.
The gallery then sent the work to Stebbins to authenticate, Eldred said.
Stebbins said he remembers several Heades turning up in 2007, but "Haying on the Marsh" was the first he authenticated this year.
The paintings have been fetching high prices at auctions, Stebbins said, and that has spurred a slew of forgeries.
A Heade painting discovered in an Arlington attic sold for just over $1 million in December 2003 at John McInnis Auctioneers in Amesbury.
Eldred said his gallery estimated "Haying on the Marsh" would go for between $300,000 and $500,000 at the Aug. 1 auction based on its size, condition, and rarity.
"The amazing thing is, it'll probably bring that or more," said Stebbins, who described "Haying on the Marsh" as a "small, nice painting of modest size."
"In this economy, it seems odd: There's a lot of people seeking beauty and meaning," Stebbins said.
"And they're still collecting American art, for that reason."
Maddie Hanna can be reached at mhanna@globe.com. 